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#4. Radio Hosts Opie And Anthony Got Rich By Faking A Politician's Death

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Notorious radio shock jocks Gregg "Opie" Hughes and Anthony Cumia weren't always kings of the New York radio scene's "bitter divorced fathers" market. They began as successful DJs at Boston's WAAF-FM, where they felt they weren't being paid enough, their time slot wasn't ideal, and their contract forced them to turn down much more lucrative offers from rival stations. The duo reasoned that if they wanted their careers to take off, they would have to use their God-given asshole powers to get themselves fired.

And so, on April Fools' Day 1998, the two shock jocks decided to pull their darkest prank to date: They announced, solemnly and without a trace of humor, that Boston Mayor Tom Menino had been killed in a violent car crash while visiting Florida. Then they inserted fake soundbites from reporters on the scene and even a police spokesperson. They had friends call in to provide additional "eyewitness facts," like that a tractor had been involved and that a young Haitian hooker was in the car with the mayor at the time of the accident.

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"My foot is going to be in a violent crash with your asses."

"But didn't people look at the calendar and assume it was a prank?" you ask. They accounted for that -- they intentionally set up a different April Fools' prank -- that Pearl Jam had broken up -- as a decoy, hamming up the Pearl Jam story while quietly and respectfully telling listeners to tune in to the 6 o'clock news for the official announcement of Menino's death.

As the mayor was out of town, the story had spread like wildfire before Menino returned to the city in totally not-dead condition to quash it. The mayor was understandably pissed and demanded that Opie and Anthony be fired from WAAF-FM, which is exactly what they wanted in the first place. The pair immediately bounced back and moved to New York, where their careers skyrocketed. They lived happily ever after, until Anthony went on a series of racist rants in 2014 that got him fired for good. So, yeah, maybe this type of success has a limited shelf life.